Why Is The Airlock Moving???

Charles, It could be your temperature is rising, dissolved CO2 or it could be fermentation. See if there is any dissolved CO2 by pulling a sample with a syringe. If you get a lot of foaming in the syringe and the wine is clear, stir the wine vigorously let it sit, do it again several times. Then repeat the test.

Sorbate doesn't stop fermentation, it keeps yeast from reproducing. Can you chill this and rack it again? You don't necessarily have to rack it cold although I prefer to do that. That way your yeast will go dormant if in there and maybe settle out to be racked off.

It could be aliens, but start with the normal stuff first... :o)

Joe

I tried the syringe and I didn't see any foam. You're probably right on with the fermentation. It must be moving INCREDIBLY slowly. I'm heading to Walmart right now to pick up a couple plastic garbage bins and a few bags of ice. I'll submerge my carboys in ice water. How cold does the wine need to get down to and how long should the low temp be maintained to guarantee the yeast are dormant and have settled before racking? FYI, I have 2 full 6.5 gallon carboys.

Thanks for the great advice!

Charles

That's difficult to say, a few days at least. I leave mine at 25 F for a few weeks. Is the wine very clear: IE if you shine a flashlight through it do you see particles in suspension in the beam? If so, you may want to consider renting a filter; I'm just not sure the ice trick will work well enough. You can get one a wine shop pretty cheap, I have a Buon Vino Mini-jet and the sterile filter gets wine pretty clean. It's not a true sterile filter, but it will do a pretty good job.

In the future when you make a dry wine the following is the procedure to measure dryness with clinitest tablets; most pharmacies don't stock them but can get them. (Any pharmacy supplied by McKesson can get them, we stock them.) These tablets can be used to determine if there is any residual sugar left in your wine.

What you do is: For sweet wines, follow the instructions.

For dry:

• Ignore the instructions that came with it:

• Place 10 drops of wine in the test tube:

• Using the '2 drop' chart determine RS by matching the color change and dividing the result by 5.

They sell a test kit which include the test tube, eye dropper and a small bottle of tablets, they also sell bottles of 100 and foil packs of 100. I can only get the 100 tab bottle now, it's a Bayer product, PN 2126.

Hope that helps, Joe If the RS is 0.2% or less the wine is dry

The wine is crystal clear at this point. I can see no particles in suspension. Would a filter serve the purpose of removing live yeast cells? If so, would a filter small enough to filter yeast cells also strip the body of delicate apple wine? Since it's an apple wine, I was looking to get 3% sugar out of the finished product. That's another reason I stopped fermentation at approximately 3 BRIX. My hydrometer conirms I'm actually at 3% sugar so I'm right where I want to be if I can just keep it there.

I put the wine on ice water tonight. I'm not sure how cold it will get. Is the idea to make the yeast cells go dormant and then they settle to the bottom when inactive?Then rack off the dormant yeast cells? Also, how do you achieve 25F?

Thanks! Charles

With the correct pads, yes.

Maybe but probably not much. Most of the apples like flavor comes from the malic acid which is in solution.

If your hydrometer says your at 3 brix, your probably closer to 5 in reality due to the opposite effect alcohol will have.

Yes. Then either filter or use the Sorbate/Sulfite method.

Freezer. But you have to be careful.

Andy

Looks like the coldest I can get the wine using my icebath method is about 37F. Is that cold enough for cold stabilization or am I wasting my time? Unfortunately, I don't have a freezer. This batch is 15 gallons so I wouldn't be able to fit it into a conventional freezer anyway. Thanks for the help!

Charles

It may be, but maybe not. These things aren't absolutes. The yeast is a living organism and there are too many other factors to really predict.

37F will slow the yeast down but I have had yeast ferment slowly in that range. There is a very good chance they will servive the experience and become active again when the wine warms up.

Andy

It seems like the original purpose of the post got lost in this thread? You've said the wine was clear and you've added sorbate and sulfite, so I am not sure what's the point behind cooling it down now? I mean yes, you can do it to cold stabilize the wine, but I'm not sure what additional help it'll give you with the remaining yeast?

AFAIK, cold stabilization does not guarantee on its own the wine will not start fermenting again later if the wine is not sorbated as well. If that's incorrect, I'd really like to know because I can't stand the smell of sorbate.

But back to the original post - if you're worried there is something strange going on, you can always filter with #3 pads for Mini Jet. It's not sterile, but it'll take most of the yeast out. I would trust it more than the cooling method. Or add more sorbate if you're ok with that - it's possible you haven't added enough or it was past its prime.

Cooling is good if the ferment is active and you want to stop it at a certain point. But you're past that stage and it sounds like you have to go to a lot of trouble to get the temp down to a decent level. I would skip it altogether in your situation.

Pp

I had sulfited to recommended levels and added sorbate a couple weeks ago and still noticed a bubble every 15 minutes or so. By cold stabilizing, I was hoping to force the remaining yeast go dormant (if that was what was causing the movement in the airlock) and settle out so I could rack off the remaining yeast. Sounds like it's more trouble than it's worth. Filtering sounds like a better solution. I was just trying to avoid the purchase of a Mini Jet which I would not use very often.

I received another good recommendation from a winemaker friend of mine in Amador County, CA who makes excellent apple wine. He suggested I take a peek at a sample through a microscope to rule out all speculation. I have a doctor friend who has offered his equipment and expertise this weekend in exchange for wine. Should be interesting what we find or don't find.

I'll let the group know what we uncover...

Thanks, Charles

A bubble every 15 mins doesn't sound like fermentation, more likely the wine is just degassing. If you have the option of checking it under a microscope, that should give your a clear answer, that's perfect.

Depending on where you live, it might be possible to rent a Mini Jet from a winemaking on premises store? It's pretty common here in Canada. Or get in touch with other winemakers in your area and borrow one.

Pp

I'm really hoping it's just degassing. I've never made an off-dry white wine fermented slowly around 60F before so I have no reference for how much degassing is normal. If it is degassing, how long should it last? I'm going on 2 weeks of slight movement in the airlocks of my

2 6.5G carboys...

Two weeks is not unusual, but regardless of the cause you don't want to bottle yet.

Or the sulfite and sorbate stunned the yeast but there is enough viable yeast in there that the fermentation is starting up again, slowly. Or the sorbate is preventing the yeast from reproducing but there is enough of a population left that they are continuing to ferment at a sustain level rather than a reproduce level.

Agreed. If you know what your looking for. I'm not a biologist, but my understanding is that you will see yeast. The trick is to determine if they are viable and to do that I think you have to stain them. The live yeast will stain but then will flush the stain from the cell. The dead yeast will stain and remain stained.

Andy

The cooler you ferment, the more CO2 stays in the wine. I had wines fermented at around 60F, racked 2-3 times after, that were still slightly carbonated after 9 months in the caroby.

Pp

How do you tell that it was / is CO2 from the primary fermentation instead of a self or spontaneous ML fermentation that started near the same time or slightly after the yeast fermentation?

The wine is completely dry as confirmed by sg readings and Clinitest, so it's not yeast activity.

I haven't done an ML test on these, but some of these were kit whites, which should have no ML bacteria; others were treated with lysozyme during primary fermentation, and all are sulfited to proper levels. Plus the acid level is not changing, there is no sediment, and there is not enough CO2 to suggest active ML fermentation.

Pp

All the more reason to believe it might be ML activity.

The kit may not have had ML - probably did not - but that does not mean that it could have come in from elsewhere in your environment.

My understanding of lysozme is that it helps to prevent spontaneous ML but does not necessarily prevent it.

Some ML can be active up to 50 ppm - not likely but possible. I innoculated with a ML culture that supposedly can survive up to 50 ppm and a pH of 3.2. I have my doubts but I guess it is possible with the cultured strains and the cultured strains came from somewhere.

I don't think ML throws that much sediment and it does not necessarily produce that much CO2 - in my experience just enough to make the wine slightly "spritzy"

You may be absolutely correct but I still suspect ML.

Okay, I'm curious why? I can see it's possible, but given the various circumstances I've described, it seems very unlikely to me. In my experience, whites always end up with much more CO2 after fermentation than reds because they're fermented colder. And they're racked less and more carefully.So it makes sense to me that degassing would take longer.

Just one comment about the kits - if it really was ML, then it should be very noticeable in the taste. It's my understanding white kits contain larger percentage of malic acid than fresh juice of same varieties, and that kit wine that goes through ML ends up really flabby. That's certainly not the case for these wines.

Tell you what, to put htis to rest, next time I'm doing a chromatography test, I'll do 1-2 samples taken from these whites, that should tell us exactly what the deal is with ML here.

Pp

I guess my one of the reasons is that I have never had the experience of CO2 staying in the wine and I have never had to stir.